A 'CONDOM CZAR' is to be hired by council bosses to hand out contraceptives to children as young as 12.

Wigan council is advertising for a "condom coordinator" who will be paid '11,000 a year to hand out condoms and family planning advice.

Town hall chiefs hope that the appointment will halve teenage pregnancies in the town by 2010, as they will be able to give youngsters a card which they can show to school nurses, doctors and family planning workers to get free condoms.

No amount has been set for the number of condoms being handed out, but pupils will initially get 20 a month - and they can ask for more.

The appointment has been condemned by sexual health experts, who claim that the move will encourage teenagers to have sex.

Norman Wells of the Family Youth and Concern group said: "This is grossly irresponsible and will only facilitate the sex lives of young people.

Education

"It is a recipe for disaster in terms of the sexual and emotional health of young people."

But Professor John Ashton, north west public health secretary, says that attitudes towards sex education need to change.

"We need to break down the barriers so that children are able to seek help if they need it. At the moment there is a real irrationality about the subject.

"Children are having sex before the age of consent, but in some deprived areas the way children are learning about condoms is when they find them in the gutters."

In Wigan, the numbers getting pregnant under the age of 18 in 2002 rose 25 per cent higher than the UK average.

Interviews for the part-time job - funded from a '180,000-a-year teenage pregnancy grant from the government - are to start on July 26.

A spokesman for the council said: "The scheme is already running successfully in other areas, from Lothian to Lincolnshire - why should Wigan, where teenage pregnancy rates are consistently higher than the national average, be left out?"

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